Is the City of Houston shrinking?

During its fiscal year 2011, the City of Houston apparently lost more population than it had gained in the previous 10 years. That’s according to a couple of numbers on page 227 of the City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for that year. The City begins the year with 2,257,926 people and ends it with 2,107,208.

This is kind of a problem for a City in the middle of one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. Could we be watching a rerun of Detroit?

At Houston Tomorrow, we have been making the case that the City’s future is going to depend on producing large areas of transit-oriented development.

We know from the Stephen Klineberg’s Kinder Houston Area Survey that 62% of the City’s residents want to live in walkable areas with easy access to all the amenities a City should offer.

But real walkable urbanism is fundamentally not allowed by the strict development codes that favor suburban form and driving. What urbanism there is either happened before the laws went into place in the 1970s or has been developed since then by obtaining variances from the Planning Commission.

Perhaps more importantly, transit-oriented development requires transit, and a lot more of it than we have. Now we are faced with the very real possibility that the City and the Metro board of directors will decide not to make the much-needed investment in more light rail any time soon.

At a recent Houston Tomorrow symposium on Houston’s Transit Future, Metro president and CEO George Greanias presented the situation Metro faces in deciding what to put on the ballot in November regarding the 25% diversion of the sales tax revenue to 15 cities – including the City of Houston – and Harris County.

So far, he said, this practice has cost the transit system $2.7 billion, not to mention the federal money that could have been leveraged.

One slide showed that the 14 small cities produce 6% of the sales tax revenue but get back 16%. Similarly, unincorporated Harris County contributes 10% but takes 18%. On the other hand, the City of Houston contributes far more than it takes, 84% to 62%. I’ve had a brief glance at a table that shows at least some of the small cities get back many times what they contribute.

Effectively, our transit taxes are subsidizing 14 small cities and even worse are subsidizing the fast growth of unincorporated Harris County.

We continue to believe that money should be invested in transit, and thus in the City of Houston’s future. It is imperative that Metro’s board of directors do the right thing, by giving the citizens a straight up or down vote on whether to continue the diversion of funds that are needed to restart the economic engine that powers the region.

Houston Tomorrow advocates giving the voters in the Metro service area the ability to vote for spending all of their transit taxes on transit.

You can join us by sending a letter to Mayor Parker, other local mayors, the Metro board, and the County Commissioners requesting that they support ending the diversion of our transit taxes, by clicking here.

I’d also like to say something else. How does taking money from the 14 “small” cities and putting it in the transit system “restart the economic engine that powers the region”? Check that… since when is Metro transit an economic engine that powers this region?

I think it is enlightening to realize that aggressive annexation through the 80s and 90s masked the fact that inner city Houston was not growing at all and in fact shrinking. If something is not done then Houston will fall prey to the same issues as in the rust belt as residents flee to the suburbs and the inner city decays and tax base shrinks.

City of Houston needs to release more of its ETJ so it can concentrate spending money and resources on improvements more in the core. There are residents in some Sugar Land addresses way out near Cullinan Park that have been begging Houston to release them so city of Sugar Land can take them, but there is gridlock. Seems this would be good for all parties, so why can’t it happen? Just one example….

I kinda guage things by my industry and that is Beer industry, and i will say that we took a beating in 2008, but many of our clients like HEB, Kroger, Specs, and other chains, are building like crazy compared to the rest of US.